“Each episode is going to be a competition between two handpicked designers, and the concept is that each designer has an identical home that they’re working in,” Berkowitz (right) explains. “They’ve enlisted builders to supply the homes, usually in a brand new neighborhood. ”

In this case it was Pittsburgh.

And then people come through and take a look.

“In the end, the target market is brought through,” Berkowitz says. “Hundreds and hundreds of people come in to both houses, and they vote and pick the home that they would most like to live in.”

And the designer gets to hear what they thought of his house.

“All I kept hearing was, ‘Great stuff.’ You know, just wonderful descriptions and a lot of ‘wows.’ Pretty much, people were raving about all the things that I had done.”

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(A Joseph Berkowitz-designed beach house.)

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Berkowitz is based in Lower Merion, but does projects around the country. I asked him for some design tips.

On color: “Not necessarily a good idea to play it safe and just work with off-white walls and white trim all the time. Some design really requires a little bit of risk.”

On clutter: “You should really go into your rooms every now and then and remove ten or fifteen percent of your accessories. At a certain point your eye can’t enjoy all of it, and you just glance across the room, and the general effect that you get is that it’s crowded.”

Hear more of Joe’s thoughts on color, clutter, and more in this CBS Philly podcast (runs 6’03”)…